Battle of the Mathletes: Mega Math Marathon

As the hand on the clock nears 7 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, two teams prepare to begin a national competition. This isn't a basketball tournament, nor a track meet...this is the Mathathon. Each year the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics sponsors the Moody's Mega Math Marathon Challenge, and the winning team receives $150,000 in scholarship funds toward their college education to be split between all of the participants. Each team was tasked with creating a solution to a real-world problem using mathematics, logic, analysis and persuasive arguments as to why their solution is a viable solution to the problem. The teams had until 9 pm to finish their solution, which couldn't exceed 20 pages. At 7 am, Engineering Program Director and Mathematics Instructor Mrs. Ming downloaded the problem, and the students got to work.

Senior Samuel Merga participated in the M3 Challenge last year, but felt he was, "ten times," more prepared going into this year's challenge. He spent time studying and practicing to lead his team to success, but that didn't shorten the process on Saturday.

"The first four to five hours was just research and organizing what to do. The next five hours was doing the actual math and making a mathematical model to solve the problem...and the last two hours we figured it out," Samuel explained. All of those hours were logged to predict the rate at which sea levels will rise over the next ten, twenty, and fifty years.

This is the second year that Carroll has had students participate in this competition. The students will hear the results from Moody's M3 Challenge in late April.